#Rev (GearShark #2) (26 page)

“Ejected,” the ref called, “for use of derogatory comments. Unsportsmanlike conduct.”

The crowd cheered.

“What about him? He punched me!” Conner yelled.

“You deserved it.” Braeden let go of Con, and he fell on his ass.

“Back to the game!” the ref demanded, and everyone started moving around.

A couple guys hauled Con off the field and sat him on the bench.

Before walking back to the sidelines, I gave Trent a look.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know.”

I wanted badly in that moment to reach out and touch him. Just to give something tangible to what always seemed to be between us. We couldn’t, not just then.

It actually kind of hurt.

It hurt way more than anything Conner’s mouth could spew.

We parted ways. As we walked, I felt the invisible tether between us stretching, but it didn’t break.

Romeo clapped me on the back. “Nice save, Drew.”

“Thanks,” I said, watching Con dabbing at his nose with a towel. Though in that moment, it didn’t feel like a save.

Sure, I kept Trent from taking a hard hit to the midsection, a totally illegal hit considering he already got rid of the ball.

But…

Maybe I kind of understood why Trent wanted me to just stay away. I had this tingly feeling on the back of my neck now.

Like maybe I’d just made everything worse.

Trent

Before the game…

All the Omega members were gathered, changing before the game, laughing and giving each other shit just like always. It was a good time, but I sort of felt like I was viewing it all through a window, like an outsider looking in.

But I wasn’t an outsider. I was the president. I was the leader of these men.

I didn’t want to be.

Not anymore.

In fact, I was sort of embarrassed I had to be here—with them.

I’d changed in the past few years here at Alpha U. Most of my changes happening within the past year. It was a natural progression of life, growing from a youth into an adult.

For me, it felt like more.

I guess I always used to feel like I was renting the space inside my skin. Like I was borrowing it or it wasn’t really mine. I was the football player, the jock. I was the frat boy, the playboy, the college student who knew what he wanted.

I was who everyone saw when they looked at me. I met their expectations—no, I exceeded them.

I’d always been a good friend, the kind who listened and faded into the background. The wingman. The sidekick.

Things started to change. There was a gradual shift inside me. I fought that shift for a long time. But eventually, a crack in a foundation spreads and then everything sitting on it is in danger of sinking.

My foundation didn’t just crack. It shook. It experienced an earthquake…

And it was that earthquake that rebirthed someone new.

The real me.

I no longer rented space inside my skin.

I owned it free and clear.

I wasn’t completely changed, but I wasn’t the same either. Maybe a hybrid? A combination of the past and the present, which would carry me into the future.

Like every new build, the walls and plaster would take time to settle. I was new, and I still felt scared.

I was resolved.

Not resolved to accept life, but resolved to
live
it.

As I stood here in the locker room, surrounded by men I once considered my brothers, I realized my circle was getting smaller. Not because four men in this group ruined it for everyone, but because I no longer needed to be here.

After today, after I dealt once and for all with Conner and the three other guys who attacked me, I could phase out of the fraternity. I could hand over the reins to Jack and not look back. It was time.

This wasn’t an experience I regretted, because it brought me to where I stood today.

“You’re late!” one of the members hollered and snapped me back to the here and now. I looked up. It was Daniel.

I think of all the four guys who jumped me that night, it was him I was most disappointed by. There are some people you just expect better from, so it royally sucks when they turn out to be a lot skeezier than you thought.

Daniel and I rushed Alpha Omega together. We went through Hell Week together. We even had a couple classes together back in the day when we were still taking basics. He’d been a friend. We partied together, drank together. We were brothers.

And then he held me down and whispered things like,
“People like you belong in hell,”
while
I was beaten.

Conner was a real shit-bag. But somehow, Daniel seemed worse.

I guess because with Conner, you always expected something like that, but not from someone you thought was your friend.

He’d avoided me since that night. I only ever saw him during frat events and meetings. I saw him once on campus, and he physically crossed the street to get away from me.

I liked to sometimes think it was because he was ashamed of what he did. But I knew the truth was because he thought I was disgusting.

So how come I was the disgusting one, but he was the one who acted out of his own disgust?

Daniel was looking a little rough around the edges and a little dazed and confused. His short, dark hair was mussed, and he was gripping a paper in his hand like his life depended on it.

“Where the hell you been?” Jack called, who was standing off to my left.

Daniel glanced up at him. “Sorry. I had a meeting with my career counselor.”

“On game day?” Jack questioned.

“It was sort of an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?” I spoke up.

Daniel looked at me and frowned.

“There’s an issue with my transcript,” he replied. It was like he was so distracted he forgot who he was even talking to.

“What kind of problem?” someone beside him asked.

Daniel sat on the bench. “I’m on academic probation.”

I kept my face smooth and didn’t react. He didn’t deserve my surprise. Just because he wasn’t the type of guy to ever get low scores didn’t mean he didn’t actually get them. He was never the type of person to beat anyone up either…

“They’re just now telling you now?” Jack asked.

“Apparently, there was some kind of error and their system never caught it. Anyway, the school realized it today, and I got called in.” He rubbed a hand over his head. “I’m failing two classes.”

It was late in the semester. If he really was failing, there was no way he was going to have time to make that up.

“What about graduation?” I asked.

“They won’t let me.” He sounded hollow, like he was in shock.

“You’re not going to graduate?” Jack said, incredulous.

“No!” he shouted out, frustrated. Everyone who wasn’t paying attention before sure was now. “My school records show I’m failing two classes. All my assignments are turned in, but half of them all got shitty grades. And my midterms? Apparently, I barely passed those.”

“If you were struggling, why didn’t you ask for help?” Jack pressed. “You know the fraternity has access to free tutoring. Any of the brothers would have helped.”

I nodded because Jack was right. One of the requirements of an Omega charter was he perform well in all classes and maintain a passable average.

“I didn’t know!” he exclaimed. “No one said anything to me until today. I thought I was passing. This has to be some mistake.”

“Maybe their computers are malfunctioning,” someone offered.

“They aren’t. The office checked. And rechecked. Then my career counselor called the professors and had them access their online gradebooks. I’m fucking failing.”

“What does that mean?” Jack asked. He was looking at me, not Daniel.

“It means he won’t graduate. He’ll have to retake these two classes and graduate next semester,” I answered.

“I’ll have to reenroll for next fall!” he hollered and punched a locker.

“Summer classes?” someone offered.

“Not the ones I need,” he replied, bitter.

“Can you make up the work? The assignments?” I asked, knowing he couldn’t.

“Don’t you think if I could, I’d be doing the work right now?” He fumed and looked at me. “You’re probably loving this.”

What goes around comes around, fucker.
“Of course I’m not.”

“I can’t play in the game. I’m suspended from campus activities. I’m on probation with the school.”

“That seems awful extreme for failing two classes.” Jack crossed his arms over his chest.

“I might have made a scene in the office,” he muttered. “And they had to call campus security.”

“This calls into question your charter at Omega,” I said.

His nostrils flared. “What?”

“This is grounds for being dismissed from the brotherhood.”

Beside me, Jack nodded, grim. The men all standing around averted their gazes and went back to dressing.

“You can’t kick me out of here. If I go, I’ll take you with me.”

I yawned. “Since you aren’t playing, you can leave. Maybe you can convince the teachers to give you extra credit.”

His lips thinned into a straight line.

“We’ll have a house meeting and vote on your status, and I’ll let you know.”

He slammed out of the locker room like the Tasmanian devil.

I wondered if maybe Drew had gone a little further with his hacking skills or if Daniel just really dropped the ball.

Either way, I didn’t really care.

One down, three to go.

After the game…

We got our asses handed to us. On a nicely decorated platter of La-ooser.

Not like I expected anything else, though. I mean, damn, the Wolves and the Knights together on one team?

#Epic.

It was fun to be out on the field again, although I missed being alongside the Wolves. The game ran a little longer than expected, but no one complained. The fans there seemed happy to stay.

We raised a lot of money, so I counted the day as a success.

Not only that, but the three guys who needed a little extra tackling all got what was coming to them, and by the end of the game, they knew damn sure why they seemed to be so accident prone on the field today.

One guy was already gone, off to the campus clinic because he popped his knee out of socket and had to have it popped back in. Conner’s best friend was probably going to be black and blue with bruises tomorrow, and Conner…

Well, he had a busted nose, a busted ass, and a bunch of grass stains all over his clothes. If he’d actually hit Drew like he’d intended, he wouldn’t have gotten off so lucky. The fight wasn’t totally a surprise, but I’d hoped Drew would keep his cool.

He only did what I would have done, which was taken out the threat he saw to me.

Conner was pissed, though. He was sitting in the corner of the locker room, drilling holes in the back of my skull with his stare.

After I gave a short, “We lost, but we won because of all the good we did for the charity,” speech, the guys all hit the showers and began changing.

I just left on my sweaty, stained clothes. I’d wait and shower at home. There was no way in hell I was getting naked in here in front of Con and his last remaining co-conspirator.

Even though I wasn’t showering, I hung in the locker room a bit, talking shit and laughing with the other guys. At one point, most everyone was hitting the showers, and a few had already left when Jack approached.

“Today was planned for a reason, wasn’t it?” He spoke very low.

I glanced up from my phone. “Duh.”

“It was them, wasn’t it? Con and some friends.”

I heard it in his voice, the surety. I lowered my phone and slid it into my pocket and leaned one shoulder against the lockers. “What do you mean?”

“Our own frat brothers jumped you.”

How the hell did he figure that out? I hadn’t told anyone.

A pinched look came over his face. “I’m assuming your silence is an agreement.”

“You might be on to something.” I hedged. He was the almost president. He had a right to the information.

“It’s because you’re gay, isn’t it?”

I jerked upright and reared back slightly.

Some laughter filtered in from the direction of the showers, and I grabbed Jack by the arm and led him even farther away, over near the entrance.